This is the official announcement for the Earlybird Tournament, which will be held at the University of Illinois on Saturday, October 15, 2011.

Yes we are aware that on the 15th U of I will be playing OSU at football in Champaign. The ABT has run numerous tournaments on home game days. Since teams arrive around 8-830 they beat the traffic push that accompanies the game.

QUESTIONS:This tournament will be using OLEFIN, a TJ housewrite please see this thread for more details:

http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12024FORMAT:The Earlybird tournament will use mACF format, with powers *set pending*. In particular, Earlybird will be a 4-on-4 tournament; matches will be 20/20, with sudden-death tiebreakers; bonuses are three parts read one at a time, and there will be no bouncebacks.

In terms of tournament structure, we usually use some form of round robin, followed by rebracketing and an ACF-format final.

WHO WE'RE TRYING TO ATTRACT:The University of Illinois ABT is pleased to invite all interested teams from any state to attend this tournament. In the past, we've attracted teams from not just Illinois but also Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Missouri; we hope those teams will return and bring their state compatriots. Everyone will have the chance to play good teams on good questions. We're also interested in receiving second, third, ... teams from the same school. This tournament will be MSHSAA certified.

COST:

The base registration fee is $65. Teams may receive a $5 discount for each working buzzer set they bring up to $10, for a minimum registration fee of $55 per team ($45 should staffers be needed). Subsequent teams after the first will be $55. Should we require staffers from schools they will receive a $10 discount per staffer off of their overall registration team.

REGISTRATION:If you're interested in registration or have any other questions in general, please e-mail me, David Garb at Dggarb at gmail dot com. Please use "Earlybird" as your subject line.

Have there been any registrations yet for this tournament? We at Rock Bridge are just waiting to hear what set is going to be used to make sure it's not conflicting with anything else in our schedule (and make sure our players can go) before we officially register, and obviously it would be dope if other good teams from around the region were to come to this.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

David, I don't know if we have asked or indicated this to you, but Rock Bridge HS (Columbia, MO) would like to bring two teams. We're working on our buzzer systems, but i can't promise to bring any currently.

bruins4life wrote:David, I don't know if we have asked or indicated this to you, but Rock Bridge HS (Columbia, MO) would like to bring two teams. We're working on our buzzer systems, but i can't promise to bring any currently.

User was reminded to enable a signature --Mgmt.

I have updated the original post to reflect this.

David Garb-Buffalo Grove High School '09UIUC-'13

Former member of the most dysfunctional scholastic bowl team in Illinois.(11:23:30 PM) garb: Wait, are you talking about the porn or the reeses?

Also, before this comes up. I am aware that on the 15th UIUC will be playing OSU at football at home. The ABT has run numerous tournaments on home game days. Since teams arrive around 8-830 they beat the traffic push that accompanies the game.

I now have staff for a 24 team tournament and will expand the field as soon as I have the teams.

David Garb-Buffalo Grove High School '09UIUC-'13

Former member of the most dysfunctional scholastic bowl team in Illinois.(11:23:30 PM) garb: Wait, are you talking about the porn or the reeses?

The morning section will consist of 4 brackets of 6 teams each playing a round robin within their bracket.

Lunch will follow the fifth round

Once teams get back from lunch they will be reseeded into 3 brackets of 8. The way they will be reseeded is the teams with the best and second best RECORD will advance to the top bracket, third and fourth best records the 2nd bracket and so on. They will play the other 6 teams that they did not face in the prelims with that one match carrying over.

If teams are tied in record going into the afternoon the tie will be broken by head to head and then PPB.

The finals will be determined by a traditional ACF advantaged final.

David Garb-Buffalo Grove High School '09UIUC-'13

Former member of the most dysfunctional scholastic bowl team in Illinois.(11:23:30 PM) garb: Wait, are you talking about the porn or the reeses?

Domain sniping wrote:Once teams get back from lunch they will be reseeded into 3 brackets of 8. The way they will be reseeded is the teams with the best and second best RECORD will advance to the top bracket, third and fourth best records the 2nd bracket and so on. They will play the other 6 teams that they did not face in the prelims with that one match carrying over.

If teams are tied in record going into the afternoon the tie will be broken by head to head and then PPB.

Why head-to-head, then PPB? Head-to-head is bad for all the reasons; also, you're only comparing within a bracket, so PPG is fine, you don't need to use PPB.

Brad FischerNHBB Director of Question Production and Upper Midwest Regional CoordinatorCoach, Keith Country Day School

PLEASE do points per game. Head to head just arbitrarily double counts a single game, since the tie wouldn't exist in the first place without that game result, and then it arbitrarily rewards the winner of that game without hurting them at all for whatever other loss of theirs created the tie, while it REALLY hurts the other team without rewarding them for whatever other wins of theirs created the tie. As for points per bonus, it is infinitely easier for PPB to be miscounted than for PPG to be miscounted, and there is no need to compare teams of unlike schedules, which is only what you are supposed to use PPB for in ACF rules. I don't trust points per bonus's reliability at all, and think in this scenario points per game is the way to compare these teams since they had like schedules.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

In a tournament this early in the season, some coaches might be concerned more with getting lots of players playing time, especially if they're losing decisively. It wouldn't be that great if one team beat another on PPG because they had a 200 point larger margin against Glenwood C. PPB would work better than PPG.

No it wouldn't. That's their fault if they decide to do that and know going in that points per game is a criteria. Not to mention that that can have the EXACT same impact on points per bonus if a team does that. Points per bonus being used to break ties within the same bracket is frankly cargo-cultism that doesn't actually get the point of the original points per bonus rule, which is strictly to compare teams who did not play like schedules. Even then, I think points per bonus is an incredibly flawed statistic, and there are officially instances now of simple typos in the statistics (which always happens!) screwing teams out of the chance to make the playoffs and win a tournament because of points per bonus tiebreakers that were wrong. The chance of error is uncountably higher than in points per game.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

whitesoxfan wrote:In a tournament this early in the season, some coaches might be concerned more with getting lots of players playing time, especially if they're losing decisively. It wouldn't be that great if one team beat another on PPG because they had a 200 point larger margin against Glenwood C. PPB would work better than PPG.

Drawing up a fair format for advancement to the playoffs should not concern itself with such concerns. After all, those concerns are what the afternoon playoffs are for, and there are 6 games in this afternoon setup against equal strength.

If you have the ability to use PPG - which this tourney does, by advancing 2 from each bracket with no wildcards - you absolutely should use PPG as the tiebreaker of choice.

Brad FischerNHBB Director of Question Production and Upper Midwest Regional CoordinatorCoach, Keith Country Day School

No. This IS the way its done. Last I checked, I'm the one in this discussion who has directed 15 tournaments and has an extremely thorough understanding of ACF, NAQT, PACE, and most other sets of rules used anywhere for quizbowl, so I think I know what I'm talking about.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

whitesoxfan wrote:How about PPG in games between teams in a circle of death?

There's an argument for it (and, for example, the IHSA does do it this way because they do care about sportsmanship; when you run single elim tournaments, it means a lot more) but why would you want to actively reduce the amount of data you've got to go on?

Brad FischerNHBB Director of Question Production and Upper Midwest Regional CoordinatorCoach, Keith Country Day School

Before this spat gets any larger, I'm going to knock Garb in the head and figure out what's going on. I'd be hard-pressed to justify using such a tiebreaker and I'd say it would be more likely than not PPG is used*.

*Probably for both morning and afternoon

EDIT: Keep in mind that the TD does have the last say on what's used as a tiebreaker.

Charles Martin Jr.University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignAcademic Buzzer Team | PresidentB.S. in Accountancy, August 2011B.S. in Finance, August 2011MAS Program, Class of 2012

Cubfan125 wrote:I've actually wondered for a while why more tournaments don't use head-to-head as a tiebreaker. Isn't the best way to figure out which team is better to look at who's won a head to head game?

No, that's putting way too much emphasis on one game. When you have, say, six games of PPG to look at, you're naturally going to have a more accurate picture of what the team is capable of. Also, the team that won that match apparently lost to someone else, and if we go by head-to-head then the other team doesn't really get credit for the fact that they (probably) beat that other team. There is no reason why we should just arbitrarily make one game the decider when we have a bunch more good data to look at.

Cubfan125 wrote:I've actually wondered for a while why more tournaments don't use head-to-head as a tiebreaker. Isn't the best way to figure out which team is better to look at who's won a head to head game?

I already explained why it's bad above. If that game didn't happen, the tie wouldn't exist in the first place, so it makes no sense to have the game that created the tie then also be counted a second time to break it.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

When the stats come out it will be more clear but I apologize for the seeding being the little off that it was. Obviously, this early in the season we have almost nothing to go on and even though we try our best it is very difficult to seed 24 teams of such high quality. I hope that everyone had fun and we see you all next year!

Thanks to everyone for coming out!

David Garb-Buffalo Grove High School '09UIUC-'13

Former member of the most dysfunctional scholastic bowl team in Illinois.(11:23:30 PM) garb: Wait, are you talking about the porn or the reeses?

All I can say from not being at the tournament is that Latin looks like they're clinched their spot in the Top 5 teams in Illinois. And it looks like good quizbowl was played by all. For those who were there, without saying anything about specific questions, how was the OLEFIN set?

King of Carrot Flowers wrote:All I can say from not being at the tournament is that Latin looks like they're clinched their spot in the Top 5 teams in Illinois. And it looks like good quizbowl was played by all. For those who were there, without saying anything about specific questions, how was the OLEFIN set?

It needs a little editing and had a few problems, but it was excellent overall. I'd say it was a very good regular difficulty set.

King of Carrot Flowers wrote:All I can say from not being at the tournament is that Latin looks like they're clinched their spot in the Top 5 teams in Illinois. And it looks like good quizbowl was played by all. For those who were there, without saying anything about specific questions, how was the OLEFIN set?

It needs a little editing and had a few problems, but it was excellent overall. I'd say it was a very good regular difficulty set.

Speaking of set discussion, anyone who wishes to offer constructive criticism on the set should join the OLEFIN discussion group. This can be done by logging in to you HSQB forum account, clicking on "User Control Panel," then clicking on the "Usergroup" tab and finding "OLEFIN discussion," and then requesting to join the group.